Another Wheelchair Throw

For years I have enjoyed knitting washcloths. Here is a patchwork throw with an elaborate pouch attached that is made from sewn together washcloths.

This is photographed from the viewpoint that the user would have. It is made from Lion Cotton yarn that is made in America and it is washable. I love this yarn because it comes in beautiful colors and knits into a soft fabric.

Pattern coming soon.

I am grateful to see this project coming to fruition.

First Wheelchair Lap Throw

My knitting lately has consisted of making lap throws that will fit the needs of a wheelchair user. These need to be sized so that they do not drag and catch in the wheels and they need some way to hold them in place so that they don't slide off the lap of the user.

The first problem is solved simply with the use of a measuring tape. The second is solved by attaching a tab with a buttonhole so that the tab will loop over the user's seat belt and then button onto the throw. A pocket is also part of the design, made to sit on the person's lap.

Here is a picture of the one I am currently finishing made from red, white and blue Lion Cotton (yarn made in America).

The ungainly looking hole is actually a knitted in slit for a pocket that will be added to the wrong side. Here is the pocket before it is sewn together and then sewn in.

The tab is made but not yet attached, so that will be a photo in the next post.

The pattern will be posted on my Etsy site as a pdf file for immediate delivery. I plan to donate a portion of my sales for this and similar patterns, to Valley Medical Foundation for the Spinal Cord Injury Unit's use.

The most difficult part of the design, I think, will be writing the instructions for placing the pocket to be sewn into the throw. I got it wrong several times before I got it right, just in the doing yesterday, so writing it will be an interesting challenge. If it is truly never to late to learn, then I guess it is not too late to become a technical writer, even if it is just for my own patterns.

I am so grateful today that the heat wave has ended and I am making progress on projects I have been planning for several months.

Fourth of July, 2011

Technically, I am a day early. Once the Fourth of July was a holiday. Now it is a long weekend. For a while last week, it looked like it was going to be a winter holiday complete with cold and rain. Now it has warmed up considerably. Better for watching fireworks displays and back yard barbecue. I am engaging in neither--will probably watch the Capitol Fourth special on PBS.

I love red, white and blue not only for the signal of patriotism that they bring to mind but because they are a gorgeous color combination. My knitting project is a red, white and blue lap throw designed to be sized for use by a wheelchair user, like me. (Will post soon.)

It is difficult to get excited about red, white and blue, in the patriotic sense, this year, because the economy is still such a mess and so many other problems abound, here and abroad.

It is also difficult not to be cynical about patriotism because there has been so much co-opting of it by politicians serving their own interests and not the common good.

The spectacle of California's annual budget debacle, which occurs ominously close to the Fourth of July each year, was mitigated by the fact of a signed budget. It would have been a better budget if the sales tax and vehicle registration taxes had been extended.

A total government melt-down at the Federal level looms large and threatening if the debt ceiling is not raised. This must be done. I am disgusted by the posturing of politicians who threaten the well-being of every one of us by their blustering.

Social Security and Medicare, the biggest fuller of budget deficits, could, I believe, be fully funded, with a small increase in payroll tax or getting rid of the cap on the amount of income that is taxed. (In other words, tax all of it--the percent might actually decline.) What a federal budget drain could be eliminated if we would just pay for what we need! Instead, we cut providers payments and threaten deeper cuts and changes in these programs. We have a government that creates dependency and then threatens to pull the programs away--not a great model of a "social contract".

We then feel helpless to do anything about it, although we can do more than we think by participating in government. Voting, writing letters, joining caucuses and action groups, setting up new co-coalitions are all things that we can do.

It's also a good time to think about buying American, and buying small. Patronizing local businesses and helping to set up more. How can we invest in one another, not in giant corporations?

2011 is such a time of discouragement and disgruntlement with our economy and our government that it is difficult to feel celebratory. Maybe we need to look to the Founding Fathers, who got together and did something about it.

What can we do after the bunting comes down and flags are put away and grills are cleaned? Let's make something together--a more civil, decent, healthier and more economically viable America.

I hope so. I think we still can. After we give thanks for the Declaration of Independence and for our freedoms and our democracy, lets get involved in it again.

I am grateful today to have the Fourth of July to celebrate. I am grateful too for beautiful weather, for a friend who is expected this afternoon and for friends who visited on Friday. Grateful, for the opportunities to think about what can be done and hopeful that more will be accomplished.

Today, this eve of the Fourth of July, I am asking myself what more can I do, how can I become more involved?

Juneuary

Normally, it doesn't rain in Northern California in June. Today I woke to the sound of rain on my gravel roof. Real rain, not the drip-drop, wish we could do it, but we're not quite making it sound of the last week or so. According to the weather forecasts by next week it will be warm. We'll see!

Since it has been so cold this spring, I have put off pricing cooling devices for the outside of my house. Many yards, which used to have trees, have now sprouted umbrellas. According to neighbors whom I've talked to, these actually do work.

I have also looked at shade sails online and at coolaroo screening and bamboo or vinyl shades. I know that the day will come when I will wish that I had swathed the exterior of the house in something. Hopefully, those days will be few and not during the longest days of summer.

Volunteers from a local group, SILVAR, Silicon Valley Association of Realtors, came a few weeks ago and rearranged my living room furniture!. It looks and feels so much nicer now--I wish it could have happened ten years ago!

Then a young friend, who had some brief vacation time between the end of school and the beginning of her summer internship in the nation's capitol, came and moved more furniture from one bedroom to another and inside of the one that is now my sewing room.

All of this makes me so happy and so grateful. The house that I have lived in all of my life is finally becoming my home.

So I may be a little chilly today but I am profoundly grateful, too. It is a day for doing cozy things and puttering at decluttering--putting back the things that were moved so the furniture could be moved.

Thank you to everyone who has been helping me so much!

A Roll Around My Neighborhood

Yesterday, while friends worked on my yard, I took myself off for a roll around my neighborhood to look at the roses and other blooming things. So many pretty yard treatments! When I returned my friends had moved into my backyard. It has been almost fifteen years (maybe longer) since I have been in my backyard. Yesterday I looked at the pavers and thought that the wheelchair and I could do it. (Probably not regularly, though. I don't want to wear out my chair.) Here I am sitting in my own backyard!

Here are some of the roses that captivated me as I rolled and photographed what I saw.

The white roses where fragrant as well as beautiful. What a lovely day. I am so grateful.

More Made in America

A few posts back I wrote about "Made in America". Here are a few more knitting projects made from American Yarn,

This small pink bag, made with a crocheted button and designed to fit over a wheel chair belt first appeared as a swatch. It is made from Caron, Simply Soft. The button is so cute! These buttons are also great fun to make. At the beginning, the little project doesn't look at all like a button, not even button like. Then at the last pull through, pop, a button! I found this tutorial, www.beatknitting.com/2008/11/crochet-button-tutorial.html

I hope to have a pattern for this little beauty up on Etsy before too long.

The next two projects are made from a pattern that I adapted from a kit. I believe that the seller is Country Wool, http://www.countrywool.com . Country Wool carries yarn from Brown Sheep Company.

Here are the pictures

I am grateful for the fun that I have with knitting; that the things that I make are useful and pretty and that I can still find yarn that is made in America.

Easter already

When I last posted it was still early in Lent. Time has been telescoping on me, but I am spending time in tinkering and crafty and cooking pursuits. (Anything to avoid writing, which is what I should be doing!)

Friends gave me this lovely lily

I have been making Feta and Green Onion scones following the recipe for Savory Cheese and Green Onion scones on Farm girl foodie (link under blogs to the right.)

I am going to watch the Easter Vigil from the Vatican on EWTN, savor the music and the beauty, while remembering friends near and far and some gone now whom I celebrated with when I was young. Our priest, who always sang the ite missa est twice with the alleluias after it, because he couldn't resist the sheer joyful beauty of it.

A blessed, joyful and beautiful Easter to everyone. I am so grateful to be here and to have these memories and traditions. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to my life so far.

Made in America

I have been following ABC's World News Tonight's feature, Made in America and decided to look at some of my own things. To my dismay, my bears, who keep me company while I type, and are quiet while I tear the house apart no matter how much they might want to talk back, are all made in China!

Some yarn, however, is made in America. Below is a small knitted pocket that I am making from some left over Dazzelaire, a Caron acrylic. On the back of the label is a small logo that reads, "Made with pride in the USA". I have had the yarn for sometime though and could not find where the yarn is currently made when I went to the company's website.

Here is the yarn in its wrapper along with the pocket or pouch, which I am designing to be worn over a belt. My new wheelchair has a belt and such a pouch would be most useful, I think and might be useful to others as well.

Sometime ago I made a wrap-around or circular shawl using this yarn and it has seen much use and washed well.

Another scarf from another Caron yarn, Simply Soft is here.

The star in the label below to the far left has the made with pride in the USA wording around it.

Finally, I found a swatch in another color of the Simply Soft, that I will probably make into a small purse or another over the belt pouch.

I am grateful to find some things "Made in America" in my house. Can't help wondering if the hand-dyed yarn that I have thoroughly enjoyed using, which is largely natural-fiber and more high end, is also made in America.

Knitting again is also good. It is something that I missed while I was in the hospital and wasn't sure I could take up again, since the set-up of the new wheelchair is so different from the old one. But accommodations and adaptations are being made almost daily here proving that one is never too old to learn. I am grateful for this too.

Spring Not

And then it got cold. Some elevations near me received snow. Very pretty in the news. Not so much so for gardeners near those higher elevations.

The news casters talked about the last two times it snowed in the Bay Area low enough for it to stick in San Francisco.

In February 1976 it snowed and I have pictures of Papa scraping snow off the windshield of my 1964 Rambler Ambassador. That is the nearest that car came to snow.

In January 1962 I woke up one Sunday morning (at least memory calls it a Sunday) to look out my bedroom window on a backyard that looked like someone had taken a giant sugar duster to the yard and sprinkled powdered sugar all over it. I couldn't believe my eyes and I hurried out to the dining room to open the floor-to-ceiling drapes for a better look! Wow! It wasn't powdered sugar at all ! It was snow. I woke up the rest of the family to come see my amazing discovery.

This time it did not snow at the lower elevations as predicted on Thursday and Friday. In fact, it barely rained. Some weird convergence of pressure systems made for unusual weather.

Is it global warming or some other source of climate change, or just odd weather? Humans have always noticed and talked about the weather. After all, at its extremes weather can wreak havoc with our lives, remind us of how fragile we are and how much we are not in control of nature.

Maybe that is why we like the theory of global warming so much--it puts us in a central position and in control. Not to say we should be wasting fossil fuels the way we do, but I do think there are other reasons not to waste.

I would love to see less waste, and I would love to see the true cost of our wasteful misuse of nature's bounty factored into the cost of the things we buy and discard so haphazardly. I have wanted to see that since I was an undergraduate in college in the 1960's and a fellow student in Econ 1A raised the question of how we could or should factor in the cost of the use of non-renewable natural resources. It is a disappointment to me that almost fifty years later we still don't have any formulas for doing this.

If someone knows of a history of climate or weather that I could request next month from the library as one of my monthly books, I would appreciate it. The historian in me questions some of what I hear as science. (Just a skeptic at heart, I guess.)

I am grateful to live in a free society, where I can be a skeptic, and where I can even show what may be my ignorance without worrying about reprisals. Grateful too, very grateful that I have a warm spot to hunker down in today, more than enough tasks to keep me busy--which ones to choose first--and that the weather is warming up.

A blessed Sunday to everyone.

Signs of Spring

Daffodils blooming in the ground and in the flower pots show that spring is here. Flowering plum blossoms, with their beautiful pink flowers, are opening to the longer days. Blue hyacinths and grape hyacinths bloom. I would go out and take pictures to illustrate this post except for one major un-Spring like thing--a blast of cold air is coming at us from Canada. Rain, mixed with snow and snowflakes are predicted for tomorrow and Saturday.

It is so cold that I just want to hunker in front of the space heaters.

Girl Scout cookies are another sign of spring. Two boxes of Thin Mints--my absolute all-time cookie favorite have arrived and disappeared. (I definitely cannot eat just one Thin Mint!

Another sign of spring is cleaning! I am rearranging the middle, and smallest, bedroom in my house to be a true sewing and crafts studio. This involves a lot of packing and hauling things from one part of the house to another. Then unpacking and inventory work is completed.

Far more fabric has emerged than I would ever have thought that I had, saved for decades. Books that came home from graduate school and were neatly stowed beneath the bed await disposal in the garage. (Either the local library for their on-going friends sale or the Salvation Army will receive the books, I hope.)

Less yarn than I thought that I had has emerged--guess I've knitted most of it and don't really have a stash-exceeding-life-expectancy after all!

It is a good day to re-do my Etsy shop, which I have been re-arranging, read blogs and research recipes. Spring will come. In the meantime, I am grateful that it isn't any colder than it is! Praying also for no power outages, like the one that hit Toledo earlier in the week as a result of an ice storm.

Stay warm and dry everyone!

Equipment for Independence

I am using a power chair now. A friend took this picture of the chair.

Slide boards are an integral part of the day's routines now. The first is my wooden one.

The next one, my acrylic triangle board, custom made by TAP Plastics, is a work of art and of community. The whole team of Physical Therapists and one of the Occupational Therapists pitched in to help, taking measurements, snapping a photo and emailing it to me and finally drawing templates. I loved the process and the way the team interacted. It was so great. I think of them whenever I pick this board up, which is several times a day.

I think this is a thing of beauty.

I am grateful for these tools. The power chair allows me to get out of the house. Two weeks ago a friend walked with me, in the mild spring weather we were having, showing me the route to take to our local shopping center, where I got my haircut. This week I will go out for a doctor's appointment and I began the year with a trip in the rented wheelchair van to go see another doctor in San Jose. Three outings in the first five weeks of the year! Wow! If I don't count going to hospitals last year, this is more than I got out in the last two years.

I am grateful for friends who are helping me to develop new skills too.

Home from Rehab with New Equipment and New Skills

It turned out that all of my "amateur" efforts to resolve my pain were not enough. On Oct 30 I could not stand up to get out of bed. On Oct 31, with the help of very dear and kind friends who are like a second family to me, I went to the ER at Stanford University Hospital. There I was "admitted for observation" and a team of experts determined that I should go to the Spinal Cord Injury, Rehabilitation Unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center--also known as Rehab 1.

While most of the patients who come there do have spinal cord injuries, some do not. Some have broken bones that are mending, and some like me, are "old polios", with post-polio syndrome. (It is a premier center for the treatment of "post--polio syndrome" as well as spinal cord injuries; it is in fact, where my "post polio syndrome" was first diagnosed over twenty years ago.)

It is questionable whether I will walk again, partly because it was deemed that it wasn't (and isn't) safe for me to be doing it especially since I live alone, and partly because the pain was caused by the spinal stenosis creating enough nerve damage that it may not be possible for me to walk again. Of course, I hope that with time the nerves will heal. On the other hand, my parents probably hoped that for a good part of late 1953 and much of 1954......

Needless to say, there are grief issues surrounding this. (And that is probably an understatement.) There is also good news. I came home in a power chair (on loan until my own is delivered) I have a new haircut--from a mandatory recreational therapy outing--in the power chair--to the little hair salon across the street from the rehab center. I went out to lunch--another outing--something that I haven't done for so long that I can't remember how long.

I was cared for with such gentle kindness and marvelous competency that I miss everyone enormously. The nurses are the best. They come from all over the world. I fell in love with them and will remember them for a very long time. (The nurse assistants also.)

The PT's (Physical Therapists) are the best I have ever had except for one young woman who worked with me in Chicago in my halycon graduate school days. They are in the same league. I miss working with them six days a week! I miss the gym equipment and I am doing the exercises that they taught me. I do not want this body to become "deconditioned" again!

The best OT (Occupational Therapist) and one of the finest people I have ever met brought me home within the first three days of my admission to see whether the house was suitable for me to continue to live in. (It was, thank God!) She determined what changes I should make and friends pitched in to accomplish the heroic task of moving things around so that a hospital bed could be delivered. (Power up, power down makes transfers easier.)

Then she taught me how to transfer with a slide board, use various new equipment for (ahem) various daily tasks. Then she brought me home again to make sure everything was in place. It was--almost. The hospital bed people had delivered the wrong bed. She quickly got it sorted out and they--just as quickly corrected their error.

I am now sleeping in the "pretty room", that I blogged about so many, many posts ago when my young friend, now about to graduate from college, painted it that summer after her high school graduation. It is satisfying to fall asleep and wake-up to the color scheme I chose and the rose curtains that my sister made that year.

If there are any typos here, please blame them on the squirrels--they have been distracting me for at least the last hour with their antics in my trees where they are finding a Thanksgiving feast of their own.

I have so much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. I have always thought of the old Beatles song, "We get by with a little help from our friends." I have gotten by and am getting by with a great deal of help from my friends, old friends and new ones. Thank you everyone!

Heat Waves, House Guests and Chronic Pain

I see that it has been a long time since I posted. The weeks flew by, punctuated by heat waves during which I mostly stay away from my computer. The house heats and heats and finally feels like it is going to explode. Then it cools. Relief that I can almost feel in the rafters.

My family visited briefly. The visit was marred by a heat wave! We are just finishing one now. The days are shorter, so the heat is not so oppressive and the fall light and colors give the experience a different quality from the high heat of summer. Somehow, with the knowledge that winter is coming, the heat is not so difficult to bear or so oppressive.

This morning as I looked out of my bedroom window I saw a trio of great red globes hanging low on my neighbor's pomegranate tree. Beautiful, beautiful fruit of fall.

Chronic pain has been plaguing me for month. A combination of sciatica, spinal stenosis and arthritis. I think that, with the help of the web, I am finally getting the positioning of pillows and bolsters arranged just so and the morning pain is lessening. The web has also yielded information about herbal and homeopathic remedies that are helping somewhat.

I am waiting for a package that contains a bottle of MSM, a supplement that I wish I had known about earlier. It will be interesting to see if it lives up to its reputation.

Gratitude filled my heart this morning when the pain on arising was not so bad. It is a beautiful day and the hummingbirds are feeding on the pineapple sage. My favorite time of the year. So I will hang on the gratitude and let it carry the day.

Remembering Mama

Today, if she were still alive, my mother would be 100 years old. I am glad that she is no longer struggling in her body, as she surely would be if she had lived this long. But I do miss her. I wonder what she would make of the Internet and Facebook. Had that come along in her lifetime, I am sure she would have used it well to connect with the women whom she had gone to high school and then nursing school with in the 1920's and 1930's.

She lived through the watersheds of the Great War (World War I), World War II, the Great Depression and Vatican II. She knew food shortages and rationing--I remember her stories about adding food coloring to the margarine to make it look like butter and the shortage of sugar during World War II. I am sure that she and her mother must have planted a Victory Garden.

She loved pretty things--I still have a plum-velvet gown that she wore to go dancing and several vintage bags that speak "roaring twenties" when I take them out of my drawers now and hold them in my hands.

Mama made the best lemon-meringue pie that I have ever eaten. So much so that neither of her daughters even try to replicate it. She also made stuffed cabbage and apple dumplings, good German dishes that filled a cold winter's day kitchen with warmth and wonderful smells.

I remember "helping" her to make a meatloaf when I was about four. Her patience was amazing. I also remember wanting to imitate her by ironing--I was allowed to start with the dish towels, pillow cases and Papa's handkerchiefs and work up gradually to more complicated items. Eventually, I was accomplished enough to use the Mangle not only for flat things but even for my father's dress shirts.

Mama was an accomplished musician, singing in the church choir and playing the piano. The piano has not been played for many years, but will move to Phoenix soon, I hope, there to be played by her great-grandchildren.

She would have loved the picture-sharing of digital photography and the Internet that makes it possible to see a new-born baby or the Christmas celebration almost immediately. Her daughters have not learned how to use Skype yet, but I think she would be using it.

I live in the house she lived in. I cook with her pots and pans, bread pan and tools. While I have added some things of my own, there is a continuity here that I love. I love picking up tools that either of my parents used and having a sense of connection of my hands to their hands. I still have the yellow Pyrex bowl that Mama used to mix that meatloaf in that I helped to make when I was four.

The furniture in the living room is the same--some of it belonged to my Grandmother. It has become "antique", simply by lasting for so long. I like thinking about Mama and her Mama when I go into my living room.

When my mother was a child, Gregorian Chant was the norm for the liturgy of the Catholic church. The school, St. Mary's, that Mama attended as a child, had its own prayer book for the children. I have that book. I also have her beautiful First Communion prayer book and a collection of missals that she treasured. She and Papa were both grateful to find a Gregorian Mass in the seventies, and I am grateful that community is still here.

I wonder what she would make of today's culture, all the media blur, the noise and distractions and especially the incivility. I remember both of my parents for their courtesy and kindness.

So I remember you my dear, today. One hundred years is a long time indeed. I am grateful for this lady who was my mother. Grateful to be alive to remember her, too.

A Plenitude of Apples

A dear friend has a magnificent apple tree in his backyard. He has been bringing me the bounty of this tree in large bags for the last several weeks. I think I have received at least a peck of beautiful, wonderful and very yummy fruit. We think they are Gravensteins, a variety that has a short season and a short shelf life and may be particular to California. They are slightly tart.

Here is a picture of some in a bucket.



I also have two drawers full in the refrigerator, but wouldn't dare to take pictures! The state of my refrigerator is not publishable.

Sunday afternoon a friend made apple sauce and apple chunks that are frozen in my freezer, waiting for cooler weather and company to make a pie.

Last week, we had a truly killer heat wave for several days. I had forgotten how miserable I could be in my un-air-conditioned house! So I have not fulfilled my intentions for this blog, or for much of anything else. Hopefully, this week's heat wave will not be so bad and next week things will be better.

I am grateful for the apples, for the kindness of friends and for the respite that cooler weather brought.